Jeff Bezos: 9 Remarkable Choices That Shaped the Richest Man in the World

&NewLine;&Tab;&Tab;&Tab;&Tab;&Tab;&Tab;&Tab;&Tab;&Tab;&Tab;&Tab;"Cleverness is a gift&period; Kindness is a choice&period;"&NewLine;&Tab;&Tab;&Tab;&Tab;&Tab;&Tab;&Tab;&Tab;&Tab;&Tab;

Jeff Bezos may be the richest man in the world&comma; worth more than &dollar;105 billion&comma; but money has always been a means to an end for him&comma; a way for the Amazon founder to wield influence and shape the future&period; The single most remarkable accomplishment of his to date is that he’s fundamentally changed the culture of shopping&comma; an implausible and tectonic shift&period;

“It’s hard to imagine life without Amazon&period;com&comma;”said the dean of Princeton University during her introduction of Bezos&comma; who gave the commencement speech for the graduating class of 2010&period; Amazon had&comma; by that point&comma; become a cultural icon -- with Bezos right along with it&period;

He spoke to the class of 2010 about the choices they will face in life&period; “Cleverness&comma;”he said&comma; “is a gift&period; Kindness is a choice&period;” In a story illustrating this&comma; he recalled something his grandfather told him&colon; “One day you’ll understand that it’s harder to be kind than clever&period;”

Throughout his life&comma; Bezos has been widely admired for the daring and difficult choices he’s made during his 54 years&period; We here at Entrepreneur want to celebrate them and the entrepreneur who made them&period;

Here are nine key choices that have shaped Bezos’ life&period;

1&period; Even early on in life&comma; he did what he said he would do&period;

Establishing a track record for setting his sights on a goal and meeting them started early in Bezos’s life&period; At his high school in Miami&comma; he let it be known far and wide that he would be class valedictorian&comma; according to a classmate&period; He was true to his word&comma; and also captured the prize of National Merit Scholar and a Silver Knight award winner&comma; one of the nation’s most highly regarded student awards&period; His high school girlfriend recalled how the young Bezos was fascinated with space exploration and the desire to inhabit other planets&period; In 2000&comma; he founded the private space exploration company Blue Origin&comma; which plans to launch its first space rocket in 2019&period;

By all standards&comma; the 30-year-old Bezos was already successful when he quit his job in 1994 as the senior vice president of a Wall Street investment bank&period; While researching new investments for D&period;E&period; Shaw & Co&period;&comma; he happened upon a statistic that would change his life&colon; internet usage was exploding by 2&comma;300 percent a month&period; While the investor in Bezos recognized the opportunity&comma; it was the entrepreneur in him that quit his six-figure job&comma; packed his wife and dog and moved to Seattle&comma; where he began figuring out potential ecommerce businesses to build&period;

Bezos is famously quoted for what he was looking for in a wife&colon; “The number-one criterion was that I wanted a woman who could get me out of a Third World prison&period;” He met and married his partner-in-resourcefulness&comma; Mackenzie&comma; a Princeton graduate he interviewed to be a research associate at the investment firm he was vice president of at the time&period;

He once told Vogue&comma; "I think my wife is resourceful&comma; smart&comma; brainy and hot&comma; but I had the good fortune of having seen her résumé before I met her&comma; so I knew exactly what her SATs were&period;"

His wife was the one who asked him out&period; “How can you not fall in love with that laugh&quest;” she has said about his signature braying laugh&period; Bezos and the published novelist and mother of four were engaged within three months of their first date and married after six&period;

When Bezos was trying to figure out what sort of ecommerce business to build&comma; he had drawn up a list of 20 potential products&comma; including software&comma; CDs and books&period; He landed on books&comma; due to the sheer number of titles in existence -- a virtual bookstore could easily offer more titles than and undercut prices of any brick-and-mortar store&period; Also&comma; Seattle was close to a book source&comma; the Ingram Book Group's Oregon warehouse&period;

In July 1995&comma; Amazon&period;com launched&comma; offering more than 1 million titles and an online community that buyers could easily navigate&comma; with book reviews left by other shoppers&period; The business was a smashing success&comma; and a year later&comma; Amazon&period;com had made more than &dollar;15&period;7 million in sales and grown to 100 employees from five&period;

By focusing narrowly on books&comma; he was able to win that market and create a template for the company to launch into other markets&period;

Amazon’s brand is excellent customer service -- and it’s a strategy that grew the business and built customer loyalty&period; In the early days of Amazon&comma; Bezos would bring an empty chair into meetings and would tell his executives that the seat is occupied by the customer&comma; “the most important person in the room&period;" Decisions for every department in Amazon are driven by data around the customer experience&period;

Even today&comma; a customer can send an email to Bezos’s inbox at jeff&commat;amazon&period;com&period; “When the email gets to his inbox&comma; Bezos forwards the note to the employee who is best equipped to handle the request with ‘&quest;’ in the subject line&period; Then once the issue is dealt with&comma; the team member sends a rundown of what happened to Bezos so he can know that the problem was solved&comma;” Entrepreneur&period;com's Nina Zipkin wrote&period;

Bezos is an intense guy&comma; and at one time&comma; a workaholic who&comma; during his investment bank days&comma; kept a sleeping bag by his desk so he could spend the night&period; However&comma; Bezos now chooses to spend time with his four children and wife Mackenzie&period; He has an established routine of eating a leisurely breakfast together every morning&period; After dinner&comma; he has another ritual&colon; washing the dishes&period; "I'm pretty convinced it's the sexiest thing I do&comma;"he has said&period;

While adequate sleep wasn’t always his way of life&comma; now the Amazon CEO gets eight hours of sleep &lpar;he doesn’t even use an alarm clock to wake up&rpar;&comma; and he eats a healthy breakfast while favoring food trucks outside Amazon headquarters for lunch&period;

Judging by his buff Navy Seal form at a 2017 Sun Valley conference&comma; he also clearly works out&period; It’s unknown whether Bezos has a regular workout routine or what it is&comma; but the fact that he can fit in a workout routine while running Amazon&comma; The Washington Post and Blue Origin is pretty jaw-dropping&period;

When compared to some of his billionaire brethren &lpar;Warren Buffett&comma; Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg&rpar;&comma; Bezos’s philanthropic work remains pretty under the radar&period; However&comma; he has established a philanthropic initiative called the Bezos Family Foundation&comma; which is run by his parents&period; One of the foundation’s more recent efforts is providing facilities for a homeless shelter called Mary’s Place that's adjacent to Amazon’s new office space in downtown Seattle&period;

Bezos is interested in crowdsourcing ideas for how to throw his weight behind philanthropy with immediate impact&comma; and in June 2017&comma; he asked his Twitter followers for ideas&period;

"I'm thinking about a philanthropy strategy that is the opposite of how I mostly spend my time -- working on the long term&comma;"Bezos wrote&period;"For philanthropy&comma; I find I'm drawn to the opposite end of the spectrum&colon; the right now&period;"